GaW Introduction
Reference Book: Star Wars Saga Edition Galaxy at War Few things are more constant in the Star Wars saga than the ongoing conflict of war. Our first exposure to the Star Wars saga began with the war between The Rebel Alliance and The Galactic Empire, and the stories of heroes from a galaxy far, far away almost fall against the backdrop of armed conflict. From the ancient Great Hyperspace War to The Jedi Civil War, from the Clone Wars through The Sith-Imperial War, time has been marked in the galaxy not by its long-standing ears of peace, but by its tranquility-shattering periods of war. Nearly every great tale of heroism and villainy comes with galaxy-spanning conflict as a part of its story, and the same goes for the stories of heroes in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Galaxy at War is dedicated to bringing the same kinds of epic conflict to your adventures and campaigns. Inside these articles you will find a virtual toolbox full of material that you can use to give your adventures a backdrop fitting for a setting focused on warfare. Galaxy at War is all about bringing a strong militaristic feeling to your adventures, whether your heroes are part of a military unit engaged in war or simply swept up as unwilling pawns in a galactic conflict. With Galaxy at War, you should be able to take a campaign set during any of the wars throughout the galaxy's history and create a campaign that makes your heroes feel like they are directly contributing to the outcome of that conflict. Players using Galaxy at War will find inspiration not only for their heroes' origins, but also for their Destinies. Galaxy at War helps players get into a military mindset, so that they can bring their heroes (Soldiers and otherwise) to life. Players with characters of any class in a war-themed campaign should find plenty of things to use in Galaxy at War, including new ideas for character histories, weapons, and equipment. Moreover, these articles can be a great inspiration for an entire group of players looking to find ways to bring their heroes together and form bonds that will last through an entire campaign; nothing ensures loyalty like going into the fire together and coming out the other side alive. Gamemasters will find not only sample adventures but also advice for creating and maintaining military adventures and campaigns. Galaxy at War can serve as a tool kit for putting together military adventures, from the pre-mission briefing all the way through the post-combat breakdown and mission analysis. Galaxy at War provides not only advice for running military-themed campaigns (Including the archetypal military campaign, in which the heroes play characters who are members of the Imperial military), but also provides small details and subtle touches, like military jargon and NPC personality qualities, that can help GMs transform adventures from standard mission-based games into exciting and in-depth war epics. How to use Galaxy at War The first two chapters of Galaxy of War (Military Heroes and Hardware) contain information for players: character-building information as well as new mechanical systems meant to interact with the heroes' normal abilities. The remainder of Galaxy at War is primarily for Gamemaster use, although Military Organizations contains a great deal of information that will be useful to players looking for ideas about character history or aspirations. As a Player As a player, you likely want to focus not only on enhancing your hero's abilities, but also on fleshing out the character's personality and history to fit a military-themed campaign. A hero is not just a collection of statistics and abilities; a hero has a personality and a unique viewpoint from which he or she interacts with the galaxy. Galaxy at War can help you find the way those things exist for your character in a military campaign, and help provide depth and a knowledge of your hero's history and methods that will make roleplaying the character easier. Hero Concepts First, Galaxy at War can be used to come up with a basic concept for your hero. Aside from the new Species presented in Military Heroes, Galaxy at War can help you figure out where your hero came from and where he or she might be going. For example, your hero might be a member of one of the various military units presented in Military Organizations. You can use the information in these articles to answer other questions that will add depth to your character. Why is your hero a part of the conflict? Did your hero go through some kind of boot camp, and if so, did he or she graduate? What about Officer Candidacy Training? Is your hero destined to be a leader or some kind of specialist? Is your hero making the military a career, or merely paying his or her dues before moving on to another life? With these questions answered, you'll have a solid idea of what your particular hero's role is in a military-themed campaign. Galaxy at War can also be great for building your party's concept. Are you and your allies all part of the same military unit? Were you trained together, or thrown together for some reason? If you and your allies have personality conflicts, how do you overcome those for the sake of the mission? If you are all part of the same military unit, each hero still likely has a specialty; you should figure out who specializes in what advance, and then fold that decision into each of the heroes' histories. Hero Building With a solid concept for your military hero in mind, the next step is to build your hero. Military Heroes provides several new Species, new Feats, and new Talents to help flesh out your hero in a particular role. Additionally, if you and your allies all belong to the same military unit, there are several mechanics (Including the new Team Feats) that can help provide a unifying mechanical theme for your heroes, to go along with you unifying story theme. Hardware takes the blasters, armor, and gear available to your hero to a whole new level. In addition to new pieces of equipment available for military heroes, this chapter also includes a new Gear Requisition system, which can replace the standard wealth system, allowing you to gear up with just the right amount of equipment for a given situation. Using this system, you can make sure that you and your allies always have the right tools for the mission, not to mention giving you greater freedom to experiment with new weapons and gear over the course of multiple missions. Hero Advancement With your hero complete, your adventures can begin- but that's no reason to but Galaxy at War away. As your hero advances in level, so too will he or she advance in stature and esteem. If your campaign is using the Rank and Privilege rules from Hardware, your hero will gain a progressively greater rank within your hero's military unit. With greater rank comes a greater budget for Gear Requisition, as well as unique new abilities that can only be obtained through achieving particular ranks. As a Gamemaster For Gamemasters, Galaxy at War is primarily about two things: helping you establish the right tone for your adventures, and giving you the tools you need to construct exciting military adventures. When you start running a campaign set against the backdrop of a war-torn galaxy, you can decide how much or how little of the campaign really interacts with the war. If you plan on having the war affect the adventures, and vice versa, there are several ways that you can use the material in Galaxy at War to bring the danger and brutality of open war into your campaign. Building NPCs As with players creating heroes, the first two chapters in Galaxy at War (Military Heroes and Hardware) provide a number of new character options that you can use to create the NPC allies and antagonists that your heroes are likely to interact with in a military campaign. You'll need a cast of secondary characters for allies to support your heroes- such as quartermasters, commanding officers, undercover contacts, and enemy defectors- that help reinforce the fact that the heroes aren't the only ones fighting in the war. By the same token, none of the conflicts in the Star Wars saga is without its share of high-profile villains, and both the character options and background suggestions can help you to flesh out those characters. The same Talents, Feats, Weapons, and Equipment that your heroes can use to create the different members of a military unit can be used to create the unique leaders of the opposing forces. Building Encounters Like other Saga Edition books, Galaxy at War is filled with various elements that can be picked up and dropped into your encounters whole cloth to make the more interesting. In addition to the new creatures, Droids, and Vehicles featured in Hardware, Galaxy at War contains a number of sample encounters that can be inserted into your adventures, with as many or as few changes as you see fit to tailor them to your campaign. More than that, these chapters feature a variety of tools to help you design your own encounters that help evoke a sense of participating in an ongoing war. For example, the Battlefield Encounter Tool Kit in Military Campaigns details a number of Hazards that can be used added to an encounter to make the encounter feel more like it is taking place during a large-scale skirmish between opposing armies, while Bases and Battlestations features maps of common locals that can be used as the basis for your own encounters. Building Adventures When it comes time to combine multiple encounters to form an adventure, Military Campaigns identifies a step-by-step process that Gamemasters can use as a template for their mission-based adventures. Each adventure begins with a mission briefing, for example, and then follows through steps like Gear Requisition, insertion, execution of the mission, and eventually extraction and debriefing, providing advice for Gamemaster on how to use these steps when designing their own adventures. An adventure is far more than just a collection of encounters and enemies. The information in Galaxy at War helps Gamemasters create interesting NPCs (Which, as described above, have many of the same facets as heroes), as well as plots that are meaningful to the outcome of battles and even the war as a whole. Moreover, players are going to have access to special abilities as a result of their Rank and Privilege within their own military unit, abilities that GMs will need to plan ahead for; when a hero using their rank to call for evac, for example, the GM can have the form that the requested transport will take planned out ahead of time. Building Campaigns Once you've finished designing your adventures, all that remains is to weave them together into campaigns. If you allow your heroes the chance to influence the outcome of battles throughout your adventures (Using the Battlefield Encounter Tool Kit mechanics from Military Campaigns), the outcomes of those adventures will shape how the war, as a whole, is turning out. The heroes need not necessarily be turning the tide completely, but they may be pushing back the enemy in a certain sector of space. One of the great parts about running a campaign focused on warfare and military conflict is that the eventual resolution of the campaign is often quite obvious: the heroes' faction emerges victorious over the opposing faction. Along the way, it's important that your players feel like they are influencing the way the conflict turns out. As they rise through the ranks of their organization, they will wield more and more power, and likewise the battles they take part in should be more and more epic.